Floyd Mayweather Jnr heads to jail as WBC refuse to strip the boxer of his world title belt

Floyd Mayweather Jnr, the planet's richest, and arguably most complete boxer
will go into a Las Vegas jail on Friday for 90 days as the result of a
guilty plea on December 21 over charges of 'battery and harassment' of the
mother of two of his children.

Mayweather, 34, will wear a standard-issue blue jail jumpsuit with the letters CCDC and orange slippers, and Mayweather, a high-profile inmate, will be segregated from the 3,400 other prisoners for the first week in the high-rise jail.

Hewill be housed in a cell 6ft by 10ft, with a bunk, stainless steel toilet and sink, a concrete desk with a permanently bolted stool and two small vertical windows.

A major contrast to Mayweather’s luxury 12,800-square foot, two-story mansion with two garages, five bedrooms, eight bathrooms and a swimming pool and hot tub, housed on an acre of ground surrounded by green fairways and leafy trees at the southern Highlands Golf Club, several miles south of the Las Vegas Strip.

When the cell door slams shut at the Clark County Detention Center, it renders the proposed fight with Manny Pacquiao – in Las Vegas on May 5 – effectively dead. For now.

Top Rank promoter Bob Arum had intended to erect a temporary, 45,000-seater stadium for the mega-fight between his charge Pacquiao and Mayweather, which is expected to generate a quarter of a billion US dollars.

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The fight between the two most high-profile fighters in the sport was first mooted back in 2007, but has been an on-off saga contractually for over two years.

Mayweather’s position as WBC welterweight champion should have been annulled on his sentencing, under the World Boxing Council’s own sanctioning rules.

However, Jose Sulaiman, has insisted the situation with Mayweather is “under review” this month.

It points to nothing more than greed on the part of the sanctioning body, whose fees from cash cow Mayweather are enormous, given that he generates more pay per view buys at the television box office than any other fighter in America.

Sulaiman also compounded outrage by describing Mayweather's offence as 'not a big crime', and afterwards claiming that it was his clumsiness in the use of the English language.

Lawyers for Mayweather, who has career earnings of over $180 million US, struck a plea deal with Clark County prosecutors last month to avoid a criminal conviction for their client, which could have resulted in several years behind bars.

Instead, the WBC welterweight champion pleaded guilty to ‘misdemeanour battery domestic violence and harassment’ of his ex-girlfriend, Josie Harris, now 31, who lives in the Los Angeles area with the couple's two sons, 12 and 10, and a daughter age 8.

As a result, Mayweather was sentenced to the 90 days incarceration, and was also ordered to complete a year-long domestic violence counselling program, 100 hours of community service and pay a $2,500 fine.

The 90 days are expected to be reduced, once inside, to 65 days, with Mayweather leaving the prison in the second week of March.